NEW YEARS AND NEW STARTS by Liz Manning
Happy New Year Everyone! No I’m not being a late running March Hare. Today is actually 1 st January for all who follow the Julian calendar. So if you are Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, or Berber, Happy New Year to you my friends. Most of us in the western world go by the Gregorian calendar, which gradually replaced the Julian from the late 16 th century, correcting an anomaly within the extra leap year day. The Julian calendar was itself a standardisation to prevent errors from a previous system of variable year lengths, in which politicians added or refused any number of intercalary days between February and March to promote their own ends. Announced with little notice, these meant many Romans, just like us between Christmas and New Year, literally didn’t know what day it was. But it wasn’t the only calendar in use. There were the Asian, Alexandrian, and Syro-Macedonian calendars, as well as others. They may have aligned with the Julian month lengths (which we still...